What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day
#1
How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of work rather than your task list.

   

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they’ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.

Don’t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.
Tumblr founder David Karp will “try hard” not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc. profile of him. “Reading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,” Karp said. “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”

Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don’t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It’s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern’s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning, and it’s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.

If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it’s a gradual but rewarding process of training interrupters and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.

Gain Awareness, Be Grateful
One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked “How do the most successful people start their day?”. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.

Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.” Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you’re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize “everything you want in your life as if you had it today.”

Robbins offers the “Hour of Power” segment of his Ultimate Edge series as a free audio stream (here’s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you’ve met in your career are working on Robbins’ plan.

Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First
Brian Tracy’s classic time-management book Eat That Frog gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you’ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you’ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here’s how to force yourself to stick to it:

Choose Your Frog
"Choose your frog, and write it down on a piece of paper that you'll see when you arrive back at your desk in the morning, Tripani advises."If you can, gather together the material you'll need to get it done and have that out, too."

One benefit to tackling that terrible, weighty thing you don’t want to do first thing in the morning is that you get some space from the other people involved in that thing--the people who often make the thing more complicated and frustrating. Without their literal or figurative eyes over your shoulder, the terrible thing often feels less complex, and you can get more done.

Ask Yourself If You’re Doing What You Want to Do
Feeling unfulfilled at work shouldn’t be something you realize months too late, or even years. Consider making an earnest attempt every morning at what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford to do:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

“Customer Service” (or Your Own Equivalent)
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark answered the first hour question succinctly: “Customer service.” He went on to explain (or expand) that he also worked on current projects, services for military families and veterans, and protecting voting rights. But customer service is what Newmark does every single day at Craigslist, responding to user complaints and smiting scammers and spammers. He almost certainly has bigger fish he could pitch in on every day, but Newmark says customers service “anchors me to reality.”

Your own version of customer service might be keeping in touch with contacts from year-ago projects, checking in with coworkers you don’t regularly interact with, asking questions of mentors, and just generally handling the human side of work that quickly gets lost between task list items. But do your customer service on the regular, and you’ll have a more reliable roster of helpers when the time comes.
Reply
#2
Thank you.

I am always looking for ways to be more successful.
Reply
#3
I'm retired now so for the first hour every day I check the Mustang forums! Rolleyes
Reply
#4
(08-23-2012, 11:09 AM)Rare Pony Wrote: I'm retired now so for the first hour every day I check the Mustang forums! Rolleyes

You've retired successfully then! SSig_goodjob
Reply
#5
I am not yet retired but I am tired ! :>)
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  How Turbo Chargers Work Mach 1 Club 4 13,064 06-16-2011, 02:23 PM
Last Post: Mach 1 Club
  How Superchargers Work Mach 1 Club 1 10,163 01-25-2011, 06:13 AM
Last Post: 1969jimmach
  Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars Mach 1 Club 3 14,615 08-23-2010, 11:54 AM
Last Post: eboxgj

Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)
[-]
Latest Threads
What's One More Iron In The Fire!
Last Post: fram lee666
03-18-2024 06:21 PM
» Replies: 125
» Views: 238057
"Jacobra"
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
06-30-2023 11:13 PM
» Replies: 86
» Views: 150858
My old Queensland Ambulance
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
06-30-2023 11:08 PM
» Replies: 5
» Views: 1687
New member from San Jose, CA
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
05-09-2023 08:39 AM
» Replies: 12
» Views: 3957
Saving Seatbelts
Last Post: Jim
02-19-2023 10:23 PM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 9109
Sourcing new wheels
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
01-25-2023 02:34 PM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 1995
Shaker Air Filter
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
01-08-2023 02:24 AM
» Replies: 3
» Views: 1466
1971 Mach 1 parting out interior parts -...
Last Post: ylwhrse
12-22-2022 01:38 PM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 640
Painting
Last Post: Rare Pony
12-14-2022 06:24 PM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 1964
WELCOME ALL NEW MEMBERS INTRODUCE YOURSE...
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
08-31-2022 01:36 PM
» Replies: 82
» Views: 157028
1970 mach 1 matching numbers
Last Post: Kstweeter
08-31-2022 10:31 AM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 1086
Brake booster/servo hose length
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
08-23-2022 09:40 AM
» Replies: 7
» Views: 2995
New Member
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
08-20-2022 11:18 AM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 1498
smooth window operation on 70 Mach
Last Post: CUSTOMMISER
08-15-2022 12:10 PM
» Replies: 2
» Views: 1473
Blinkers on solid
Last Post: busted21
08-09-2022 03:58 AM
» Replies: 14
» Views: 8717
Blinkers on solid when lights on.
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
08-08-2022 12:06 PM
» Replies: 1
» Views: 1719
351 cj running hot
Last Post: busted21
08-08-2022 12:13 AM
» Replies: 5
» Views: 3403
Major Winter projects
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
07-09-2022 05:12 AM
» Replies: 49
» Views: 21264
Happy Fathers Day!!!
Last Post: JTS71 Mach1
06-20-2022 02:34 AM
» Replies: 0
» Views: 1685
1969 Raven Black 390 Looking For
Last Post: mason1958
06-11-2022 09:48 AM
» Replies: 10
» Views: 15079

>